Note from John Stoltenberg, May 25, 2007: At the age of 52, Andrea was drug-raped in a hotel in Paris. For the next six years, until she died April 9, 2005, she struggled to recover.

Andrea disclosed some details of that rape in a 1,700-word article published in The New Statesman June 5, 2000 ("The day I was drugged and raped"). She had been writing a longer piece about the experience, a text I thought she never finished because she never showed it to me.

After her death I found the text on her computer. I could not bring myself to read it until recently, and when I did I realized it is a completed work, a 24,000-word autobiographical essay as crafted as any of her best writing, and dated with finality, August 30, 1999. She never made changes in the text file after that. It was done. She showed it to no one. She made no attempt to have it published.

Andrea designated me her literary executor, a responsibility that now includes deciding whether she meant for that manuscript to be published posthumously. I honestly do not yet know. But I believe that the following excerpt is a passage she would have wanted to be read now, if she were alive,

Andrea, who in life identified deeply with other abused women, here identifies with Juanita Broddrick--a name that may be unfamiliar to many. Christopher Hitchens, in the paperback edition of his 1999 book about Bill Clinton titled No One Left to Lie To, has a chapter entitled "Is There a Rapist in the White House?" Like Hitchens, Andrea believed that there was, and that Juanita Broddrick was one of Bill Clinton's victims.

Written nearly eight years ago (and originally untitled), these words of Andrea's at last go out into the world, where, I am aware, they will take on prescient new relevance in light of Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy. To the best of my knowledge, that is what Andrea would have wanted, because she considered Hillary Clinton responsible for enabling a serial abuser of women.--John Stoltenberg, Washington, DC

Are You Listening, Hillary? President Rape Is Who He Is

I did vote for Clinton the first time. They really got me with his anti-war stuff. ... [A] few days before the election ... I heard on the radio that Bush was saying Clinton had come near to committing treason by demonstrating against the War and going on a trip to Russia when he was in college. That pushed me over to Clinton. But the second time, no. He had thrown women off of welfare and how were they going to live? ...

We all know that female impotence expresses itself as pity. Ayn Rand thought it was altruism but it wasn't. Someone looks at you with hang-dog eyes or bites his lip like Clinton, pretends to show empathy while ice water flows in his blood, the filthy pig. President Rape is who he is. Proud President Rape. Everyone turned from Juanita Broddrick. Everyone looked away. Every asshole blinked. It's pretty fucking brilliant to use force after the fuck, as he did with most of the others I know about, intimidate them, have them threatened, destroy their reputations, say they're lying or stalkers or a little mentally unhinged, having delusions of grandeur as if being fucked or mauled or harassed by him was something one dreamed of.... Always easier to blame the woman. Are you listening, Hillary? So much easier to be angry with them rather than with him. Have I got your attention, Hillary? You decide these women, every last one of them, are pieces of shit and he's the shinola. More than anyone you know how cold and premeditating the bastard is. When did your heart die? ... I'd be sick to think I had become as corrupt as you. How many women have you helped him hurt by protecting him and knocking out the opposition? Two political parties, one neo-fascist and the other neo-rapist. Or is it proto-rapist? You and I were girls together and now it's this: I'm nouvelle raped and you defend a rapist through which you defend rape through which you think the women, not the rapist, are the problem. Maybe women are just fucking stupid, you and me babe. I'm glad you're not president or on the Supreme Court. You are a running dog collaborator. You take the side of the rapist, not the raped. And Juanita B. did not lie in her affidavit, just for the record, Hill. She said under oath that they didn't have sexual relations. They didn't. She confessed to lying because she had a consciousness of not wanting to tell the truth, of covering something up. He raped her, she didn't have sexual relations with him, she didn't lie and I am so fucking tired of the media that can't even think that obvious thing through. Report it a thousand times but don't think about it once.
...
I'm really tired of women who don't care. ... Hillary's best friend, the new feminism, no one's a victim here, it's so embarrassing when a woman's raped, it's so declassé, it's annoying, the wrong time of the day, the wrong day of the week, not during office hours, the woman can barely keep herself together, she might collapse emotionally, which would be messy, or make emotional demands, which would be unpleasant, or you might have to think that it could have happened to you if it happened to her but it didn't happen to you so it doesn't have to be your problem, you don't need to get near the mess of it, the disaster of it, the desperation of it. Just cut her loose and let her die.

...
Feminists pretend we're on top of all this, as if we've done something about it. We roll the ball up the hill and a fucking rapist pushes it back down and we roll it up again and another rapist slams it down. But never admit not being in control, all polished and shiny, just keep smiling in public, the women on top of everything, and when will a woman be president of the United States? Oh, soon, don't worry. And what difference will it make? Oh, don't worry. We'll get it because we have to have it, even if it's a cookie-cutter Hillary married to ex-president Rape. I think the toleration of rape has gotten easier, I think President Rape had an impact, I think it takes all everyone's energy to ignore Juanita Broddrick, I think the pornography makes men callous and numbs women to real pain, I think everything's worse with everyone congratulating themselves that everything's better. Everyone knows what to say but no one knows what to do and they all still really think that women cause themselves to be raped, if they won't say it about all women they will say it about each individual woman.

Andrea Dworkin's last book, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant, and the twentieth-anniversary edition of her book Intercourse are published by Basic Books.